


Tongues of Lilting Grace

by heyshalina



Series: Gallows Pole [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Michael Possessing Dean Winchester, Post-Episode: s14e09 The Spear, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, selective/trauma induced mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23938828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyshalina/pseuds/heyshalina
Summary: Sam’s eyebrow twitches. He’s always been half-something. His entire life, Sam was always at best half himself. But there was always Dean – whole, loud, larger than life. Sam looks at him now, slack mouth and hung head, and sees nothing. A vast emptiness where his brother should be, and the void of it fills Sam with unshakable rage.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Gallows Pole [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725592
Comments: 10
Kudos: 88





	Tongues of Lilting Grace

**Author's Note:**

> Surprise!
> 
> I know I said at the end of Gallows Pole that that was the end of it - up until a couple of months ago, it really was the end. I was okay with the ambiguous ending, I had been satisfied, I was done. But then, inspiration came and due to the lockdown I had a lot of extra time on my hands. So here we are.
> 
> This is a continuation of Gallows Pole - while I'm sure it could be read independently, assuming you've watched up until the mid-season finale of season 14, the experience will be greatly enhanced if you read that one first.
> 
> This is a continuation in Sam's POV - it begins right after the season 14 mid-season finale, and takes us a bit farther past the ending of Gallows Pole.
> 
> Content Warnings - there is depiction of violence in this story, with a fair bit of graphic description and gore (more than Gallows Pole, for sure). Also depictions of general hand-to-hand violence in addition to weapon violence, death of minor characters, and the description of burning/burns.
> 
> Title comes from the Led Zeppelin song Kashmir. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Sam has had to face some harsh realities over the course of his existence – his life, and re-life. Growing up, each realization had always hit him like a brick to the face, out of nowhere: _Jess isn’t coming back, Dean is going to die, this is my life now_. Living the way they did, saving people, it seemed to put a haze over what life and death truly meant. Even still, it seemed that every reality-shattering event that did reach him was simply personal. A blow to his world, a changing of his tide, and the world goes on. In the apocalypse, the gravity of the effect of their actions on the world and all those that lived in it hadn’t hit until they were standing in Stull, Sam’s hand above his brother’s bloody face.

He doesn’t have any grave realizations now. There is no shock to the system. It is simply evident, in the streets and the faces around him: the world is falling apart.

Castiel stumbles beside him, and a werewolf launches itself over a post box in his moment of vulnerability. Cas turns at the last second, face split in a snarl uglier than the monster’s, and slides a silver knife into its heart. Sam grimaces. The girl looks college-aged, maybe younger. They always seem to look younger when they crumple to the ground. Cas takes a moment, leaning over and placing a bloody hand on the post box, head hung low. Sam wants to give him a minute, he really does, but they don’t have the time.

“We have to keep moving,” He says, looking across the street. The monsters have surrounded the tower, crowding the entranceway and around the garage. Jack is looking over at the mass of bodies with the same horror and understanding that Sam is sure is painted on his own face. This is all happening too fast. They have to get back to the car.

“We _need_ to get Dean,” Cas growls, picking his head up. They’re all torn and bleeding, sluggish and shell-shocked. Sam’s not entirely sure how they made it out of the building at all. He’s got a gash on his left side, and his knee isn’t holding all too well. Jack’s face is bruised, a dark wash of blue spreading from his cheekbone to his outer jaw.

Sam is surprised by his own voice, when he speaks. “Dean is gone, Cas. We need to go.”

Cas turns on him with a ferocity he wasn’t quite expecting. “Dean is _not_ gone. We have to – how can you say that?”

Sam feels his face steel over. He can say it because it’s true – because they put everything they had on the table and lost, again. Because the minute they emerged from the doors of the building, they saw a teenage girl running for her life be ripped off of her feet and bitten by a werewolf. Because he had been there in the room with the rest of them, and had seen Dean’s posture straighten, had seen his brother’s body turn without a glimpse of Dean within it.

_Again_ , Sam thinks, and he cannot fathom a worse word. It rings through his head, a mockery of itself, an affliction. _Again._

Someone screams from a few blocks down, and Jack’s head swivels toward the sound. Sirens blast all around them, alarms piercing the dead of night. Cries for help are blending with cries of pain, and horrible growls. Jack turns to look at him, expression open and afraid.

“What do we do?” Jack asks, eyes flitting back and forth across the macabre scene. “There’s already so many. Michael –”

His throat closes up. A vampire hauls a man out through a window down onto the pavement, and another monster launches itself on top of him. Sam flinches. He can’t stand still for any longer.

“We’re moving,” Sam orders, with no room for argument. “Now.”

Getting back across the street and breaking into the garage is about as difficult as Sam imagined. There are monsters surrounding the whole building, flocking to the epicenter like it’s some sort of beacon, like their savior is waiting to show them the blessed light ( _there’s nobody home_ , Sam thinks sardonically. He makes to let out a hollow laugh, but his face doesn’t budge). Cas stabs two werewolves through the heart, and Sam tosses Jack his angel blade. The problem is that they’re low on weapons, and their arsenal is back in the car. Dean had gone in with just the spear and his angel blade, and all three of those are gone to the wind. Jack raises an eyebrow at him, and Sam shakes his handgun in response.

They duck through a back door into the garage, and Sam catches a glimpse of the Impala for a single second before he’s picked up and slammed against the concrete wall. Jack calls his name, and then is tangled in a grapple with another vampire. Cas is hacking away at two vamps, bleeding from a new cut above his temple. Sam holds his own monster back with struggling grip, the vampire’s teeth gnashing inches from his face. He thinks he should maybe be scared, or alarmed, but really he’s just bone tired, and angry. It can’t be true, but looking at his brother’s car just a couple dozen meters away, holding this vamp back from eating him, Sam thinks he’s never been angrier before in his life.

He raises a leg and kicks out at the vampire’s knees, using the leverage to push it away from him. Sam staggers, catching himself with one hand on the ground, and his other hand finds a loose, rusty piece of rebar on the ground. In one fluid motion, exhausted and filled with rage, Sam turns and swings the rebar like a baseball bat. It catches the vamp where its neck connects with its shoulders, sinking through a few inches of flesh. Blood sprays everywhere, threatening to get in Sam’s eyes, but he’s already pried the rebar out again, kicking the vampire to the ground and swinging it down one more time. He straightens out, wiping blood off of his face with the back of his hand, and meets Castiel’s eyes.

“You know how to hotwire a car?” Sam asks, his hand coming up to support his undoubtedly bruised ribs. The cut on his side screams at him, but his brain simply doesn’t input the message. The keys to the Impala had been in Dean’s pocket.

Cas nods. “Dean taught me, yes.”

Sam gestures to the car, and Cas takes off at a slightly faster walk than Sam can manage, swinging around to the driver’s side door. Jack moves to help Sam, but he waves him away, and the kid wraps around the other end of the car to sit behind Cas.

Sam stands, hand resting on the passenger side doorframe. “We gotta get out of the city before the National Guard gets called in and this place gets shut down. We can’t afford to be trapped in here, we don’t have time.”

“I presume you want to go back to the bunker?” Cas asks, head down underneath the steering wheel.

“Where else are we gonna go?” Sam spits out. “It’s not like –”

A hand wraps around his calf and yanks, catching him off guard and sending him crashing into the side of the Impala. He slides to the ground, twisting, and kicks out at the body of the nearly-decapitated vampire that managed to sneak up on him. The thing’s head is nearly detached from its body, hung together with some tendon, a vein, and a dream. Sam grunts, trying to get a hold on the car and not get bitten at the same time. The back door opens behind him as he’s scrabbling on the pavement, and two arms hook underneath his armpits. Jack hoists Sam up into the car, the vampire still holding onto Sam’s leg. As soon Sam is fully on the backseat, Jack reaches around him and slams the door shut. The force of the door on the vampire’s neck is the last straw for it, and it snaps off, rolling over Sam and into Jack’s lap. Cas catches the ignition and guns the car into reverse, the tires screeching on the pavement and buckling over the vampire’s corpse before Cas switches gear and rockets toward the exit. Jack holds up the disarticulated vampire head, its expression still snarling, before he rolls down the back window and tosses it out with a shrug.

There are at least five monsters in the opening to the garage, plus the barrier of the gate, but Cas simply speeds up. He plows through the gate and over the bodies of the monsters, launching out onto the main street. Sam hears the bones and blood of the monsters crunch under the Impala’s wheels, and tries not to think about how they were all just people, an hour ago. Tries not to think about what it’ll take to cure an entire city. What they’ll have to do if they can’t.

Cas makes a beeline for the highway, speeding around useless cop cars and hoards of monsters congregating in the streets. Jack’s looking out the open window, the wind blowing his hair back so that his forehead is exposed. Sam follows his line of sight, looking up as the first of many helicopters start flying in above the city. The sirens haven’t stopped blaring.

Sam sits back in his seat, wincing as he jostles his ribs. He tries not to think about Dean, the flinch of fear that shook through him before the stillness took over his bones, before he turned around a vacant land. Tries not to think about how he can’t remember the last thing he said to his brother, because they had been ready. They had been so sure, and so wrong.

Of course, it’s all he can think about.

.

“Des Moines is on lockdown. One of the senators of Illinois is advocating they shut down the borders.”

“That’s not going to do them any good, I bet they’re already over them. St. Louis is a fucking mess. It’ll reach Chicago by Friday at this point.”

“We can’t let that happen.” Bobby sets a sawed-off down on the war room table. “This shit needs to be contained.”

“The civvies don’t know what they’re doing, they’re just pumping bullets into the monsters.”

“Let’s not forget that these monsters,” Jody asserts herself into the conversation. “Were innocent people. Are we just going to let the military kill them all, make a big pyre the size of the Rockies?”

“They can’t even do that, idiots are using lead bullets.”

“Chief?” Maggie asks, looking up at Sam. She has to say it again to snap him out of his stupor, staring at the marker over Kansas City on the War Room map. “What do you think?”

Sam drags a hand over the prickly growth on his chin. It’s been a month since they escaped from the tower and drove out of the city without Dean. A month since he’s seen his brother, only catching glimpses in the form of shoddy news feeds and reports from other hunters. The first time Dean was possessed by Michael, he had returned to them within three weeks. Sam knows now that it was all just a lie. His hand tracks over the towns surrounding Kansas City on the map, fingers tracing the red string that connects all the affected towns. He pauses over Lawrence, and Mary gives him a look.

“I think we have to educate the public on how to deal with this.” The monsters have been spreading like infection, turning any human they come into contact with and can get their hands on. The military has been holding them back, but Sam knows they’re in over their heads and running low on traditional supplies. He watches the news. “We can’t hide in the shadows anymore, the world knows about the monsters now. We have to be the ones to step up and fix it.”

“How are we going to do that?” A hunter named Ryan asks. “How do we explain ourselves, or where we came from? What we’ve done?”

“At this point, I don’t think that anyone is going to care.” Mary chimes in, leaning against the table with her hip. “What more can we throw at them, really?”

“I also think,” Sam says, swallowing. “That we need to divide our efforts between educating and helping the public, and coming up with a cure.”

“A cure.” Another hunter shakes his head. “Sir, with all due respect –”

“You heard what Jody said,” Sam interrupts him. “These people, the people turned in these cities, were innocent. They weren’t born into this, they didn’t go out seeking danger, or doing anything stupid. Not only were they forced to be monsters, they were forced to be brainwashed by Michael. These people did not deserve this, and I will kill as few of them as I possibly can. I expect all of you to do the same.”

Sam lets out a long sigh, echoing in the silence of all the hunters around him. None of them matter. He drags a hand over his face again, hangs his head low. “And stop calling me sir, okay? Jesus. Sam.”

The guy nods. “Sure, Sam.”

“Can we back up?” Bobby asks. “Where are you pulling this magical cure from, boy? Got one of those in the back of that shiny car of yours, too?”

Looking at this man, this not-Bobby, Sam is engulfed in indescribable, silent rage. He straightens up, steps away from the table. “I’ll work on it. In the meantime, reach out to the media, the police, whoever. Bobby, you be the front-man on that. Connect them to me if and when they want anything more.”

“Are you sure, Sam?” Jody asks him. “You don’t exactly have the best rapport with, you know, the law.”

He shrugs, walking away toward the hallway, a blatant dismissal. What does it matter? “I made this mess, I should clean it up.”

He leaves the hunters in the War Room, walking down the hallway toward the dungeon and the stockroom. Mary follows him out, trotting briskly to keep up with his long gait. She calls his name more than once, but he keeps walking. He’s got things to do.

“Sam,” Mary snaps, all business. Abruptly, he’s sick and tired of people saying his name. He stops and turns, raising an eyebrow in acknowledgement. Mary scoffs. They’re both tense. “Everyone is worried.”

A muscle jumps in Sam’s clenched jaw. “I know. I’m trying my best.”

“No, they’re worried about _you_ ,” Mary says. “And everything else, but. We can’t go forward if you’re not all in with this.”

“Not all in?” Sam asks. “I’m sorry, but what else could I possibly be in right now? What are you even saying?”

“If you’re going to be the one to spearhead and lead this, you have to be ready.” Mary leans in toward him, gaze soft and yet at the same time scrutinizing. “Have you thought all of this through?”

“I’m working on it,” Sam repeats. “I can do this, because there’s nothing else – there’s no one else that can. We need to fix this. And I’m sorry, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed – no one in there is concerned about getting Dean back. Did you notice that? Not a word.”

“Of course we are,” Mary frowns. “Of course we are, Sam, but we have to take things one at a time. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

Sam buries a growl in his throat, turns around and walks again down the hallway. Like he has time for sleep right now. Mary sighs behind him, all stubbornness and exasperation, and turns the other way. He stops, and turns back to her.

“Mom?” He asks, and she turns around, expression hopeful. “Have you seen Cas?”

Mary’s face shuts down. “Jack said he went to look again.”

Sam frowns, frustrated that no one told him. He nods and walks away, turning over his emotions in his head. Castiel has been leaving every day, searching across the country for signs of Michael and Dean. For every part of him that’s angry Cas is going out on his own and isn’t here, though, there’s a part that wishes he was with him. It’s so hard to reconcile the impact on the world with the importance of finding his brother. Sam knows he has to be diplomatic and strategic, but he still passes Dean’s empty bedroom every day.

He doesn’t spend much time in his room nowadays, anyway.

Rowena is waiting for him in the stockroom, perusing their measly collection of herbs and reptile body parts. Sam chokes back a scoff. When they first moved into the bunker, he’d been wide-eyed and amazed at the amount of magical supplies at their disposal. Now all he sees are limitations. The red-haired witch is rubbing off on him.

“Did you bring more options?” Sam asks, in lieu of a greeting. Rowena turns around to regard him, eyes fluttering under layers of makeup. There’s a downward quirk to her lips, though. She’s annoyed. Get in line.

“I did,” She replies haughtily, raising her chin. “Although even my more…eccentric suppliers are running low. The world’s in quite a tizzy. Your brother’s done a number on the economy.”

“Mention Dean again and I’ll chop your hair off,” Sam replies smoothly, his voice a cold dagger. He doesn’t threaten to kill her anymore – things like this hold more weight now. In evidence, Rowena collects her scarlet locks into her hands, running her fingers through the trusses. “We need to find a way to extend the barrier that the bunker has.”

“That will be creative,” Rowena mutters. “Extending a magical barrier over a three-state radius. How powerful do you think I am, Samuel?”

Sam ignores her. “It doesn’t need to get everyone, just the major areas. And then we’ll need a cure.”

Rowena spits out an incredulous laugh. “Oh, right. Anything you else you need from the store while I’m out, puppet?”

“Can you take this seriously?” Sam snaps, turning on her. The wooden bowl he’s holding in his hand creaks in his grip. “This is pretty time sensitive, here.”

“I understand that perfectly well,” Rowena replies, crossing her arms. “I don’t believe that _you_ understand the gravity of the situation. I can’t just pull out solutions out of my arse. These things take time, and more magic than I have.”

“Then I’ll help,” Sam says. “We can recruit more witches, Cas will help too. It doesn’t matter, we just need to get it done before –”

A crash outside of the door cuts him off, and a low groan echoes through the hallway. Sam rolls his eyes. God, he needs some sleep.

Rowena gives him a look. “You were saying?”

They put down their supplies on the table, moving toward the door. Sam creaks open the door and stares at the scene in front of him for a few seconds, brain not fully catching up with the visual input. Castiel is laying on the floor, half propped up against the concrete wall. He’s holding one hand to his chest, which is a mess of dark sanguine stains and torn fabric. It’s pooling on the floor, coming out of him in rivulets.

“Sam,” Cas says, and his stupor breaks.

“Shit,” Sam bounds forward and crouches beside the angel hands hovering over his wounds. “God, Cas, what – what happened?”

“Michael,” Cas chokes out, shivering as more blood flows out of the jagged wound in his chest. It’s not healing fast enough to counteract the bleeding, which means the wound was inflicted with an angel blade, and it’s bad. “I found him.”

“I can see that,” Sam breathes out. “Can you heal yourself?”

Cas takes a minute to answer, eyelids closed tight. Sam shakes his shoulders, and he just shakes his head. He turns back to Rowena, who’s still standing in the doorway, staring down at them.

“Get the mortar,” Sam orders. “Chervil, angelica, comfrey.”

Rowena retreats into the supply room. Cas fishes a hand into the fabric of Sam’s shirt, pulling him closer. Sam reaches to support his bulk with his right hand, holding Cas’ shoulder. He looks at Cas’ chest, up to his face. God, he’s so pissed.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Sam promises, and Rowena comes back with the bowl and the herbs. She gets to work mixing them together, whispering words under her breath, and spreads them across Castiel’s bloody skin. “We’re gonna stall the bleeding, make it so you can heal yourself.”

“Sam, he –” Castiel’s words choke in his throat. “Dean, he –”

“Ready?” Sam asks Rowena, cutting Cas off. She nods, smearing the last of the herbs into the wound. She smiles at him, small and proud.

“You forgot the hyssop,” She teases him, and he huffs out a laugh. He starts reciting the spell, something they found in the grimoire a month or so. No better time to test it out. As the words pour out of his mouth, the herbs begin to sizzle, and a pained noise pries from Cas’ mouth. The wound starts to glow, the yellow light of the spell mixing with the bright blue of Cas’ grace. Sam watches the cut heal, and sees Rowena’s smiling face in his periphery. He thinks that this is fitting, now, practically being Rowena’s apprentice. He’s always only been half human, the other half of him occupied by some other great evil. Half demon, half angel, and now half witch. He’s gotten much better with the magic, enough that he thinks they really could find a way to make the barrier work, to find a cure. To heal an angel.

Sam wonders what Dean would think.

All at once, the cut bursts with one last glimpse of light, and then Castiel sags back into the wall, breathing heavily. Rowena reaches out, skimming the remaining herbs off of his skin, and revealing whole, intact skin.

“Nice job, Samuel,” She purrs. “I’m impressed.”

“Thank you,” Cas grunts out, scratching out at the wall and forcing himself up into a sitting position.

“Michael did this to you?” Sam asks. “Where did you find him? You saw Dean?”

Cas shakes his head, looking down at the ground. His jaw is clenched in anger and grief.

“I saw Michael, not Dean,” He clarifies. “I found him in St. Louis, directing the monsters north. He…I looked for him, Sam. I was stupid, I left myself vulnerable, searching for Dean within Michael, and –”

He pauses, and Sam’s impatience flares. “And?”

Cas swallows, composed of remorse. “I couldn’t find him.”

.

They see Michael again three weeks later, in a news segment out of Jefferson City. The ground team holds a shaky camera, panning over barren streets. There’s a physical barrier at the end of one street, a dug trench of salt, silver, and barbed wire to top it off. Beyond the barrier, a group of four monsters band together, snarling. One reaches forward at the line, and bounces back a couple feet. Behind them, a figure stands at the corner of the block, looking at the news crew. He’s standing tall, wearing a long peacoat and a prim suit, all black.

Sam pauses the feed, and stares at it for an hour.

Later, a hunter named Josh walks into the kitchen, looks at Sam as he leans against the counter, a bowl of cereal sitting uneaten in his hands. He makes the mistake of asking if everything’s alright. Sam stares at him until he leaves the room, and dumps the cereal down the drain.

.

In April, everyone’s priorities shift when one of their guys, Jake, is found in Wichita, pinned to a brick wall on the side of an abandoned brewery, his insides torn out and his eyes burned out of his sockets. Ryan nearly gets her arm ripped off by a ghoul bringing his body back. She’s in the infirmary, with Maggie and Jack doing what they can to keep her comfortable until Castiel gets back from a mission with Jody up in Lincoln.

The rest of them gather around the War Room table. The tension is palpable, crackling like electricity along all of their palms. Sam resists the urge to drag his thumb over his wrists, digging down. He has the beginnings of a migraine developing at the base of his skull.

“So it’s no longer safe here,” A hunter named Ben says, breaking the silence. The guy next to him sighs in frustration.

“C’mon, man, we’re like two hours out from Wichita.”

The chatter picks up from there, an inane back and forth about whether they should pack up and relocate their base somewhere farther away from the deluge. If Sam was listening, he’d laugh – there’s nowhere safer in the country than the Bunker, at this point, and what? They all want to run away? He thought that the people from the Apocalypse world, more than anyone, would understand what it meant to be a hunter. To see things through until your end.

Sam swallows excess saliva pooling in his mouth, distantly realizing his breath probably smells like shit. They’d all been pulled out of bed with the news when Ryan and Maggie had returned, Jake’s body hung between them like a cut marionette. He looks up and sees Mary and Bobby standing together across the table, heads low in their own conversation. Sam stares at the table, jaw working as he tries to erase the image of Jake’s burnt eye sockets out of his head. It does no good. When he straightens up again, Mary’s looking at him, and raises an eyebrow.

Sam clears his throat, and everyone stops talking.

“Where we are now is safest we could be,” He says. “The barriers we have around the major cities are holding, and we’re working on extending them farther out. The work we’re doing in the smaller cities and towns, it’s working.”

“But it’s not permanent,” Ben cuts in. “These damn freaks keep coming out of the woodwork, and they’re too strong for any of us to face alone.”

“Which is why we have our two hunter rule,” Sam replies smoothly. “No one goes out alone. What happened – what happened to Jake is terrible, but he went off alone. Maggie and Ryan both said so. That being said, if you don’t feel safe here, you can relocate. We can communicate remotely. Jodie said she can make room with her and the girls up in South Dakota, and we’re working on getting a bigger setup there. Just in case.”

Everyone nods, wringing their hands or shifting uncomfortably. Sam sighs.

“I’ll need people to help me build a pyre,” He announces, feeling heavy and so very tired. “At least three hands. We’ll give Jake a hunter’s funeral at dawn.”

“I’m sorry,” Bobby’ s voice breaks through the silence, brash and ragged. “But when are we going to mention the elephant in the room, here?”

Mary clenches her jaw. Sam frowns, running a hand through his hair.

“And what would that be?”

“It would be the fact that Jake wasn’t killed by them monsters,” Bobby spits. “No, they just chewed him up as a snack. Jake’s goddamn eyes were burnt out by an angel, which means your brother was the one to send him skyward.”

Sam’s grip on the table tightens, the vein in his neck protruding. The room seems to dim and brighten in time with his heartbeat. A cold sweat breaks out across his skin.

“Michael is killing hunters,” Ben asserts. “It’s time we addressed him like the threat he is, and put him down.”

“Jack couldn’t kill him before, and now he’s powerless,” A female hunter chimes in. “What makes you think we have a chance against him, especially with him riding in Dean Winchester’s skin?”

“We killed Lucifer before,” Bobby says, looking Sam in the eye. A challenge. “I say we solve all our problems and stick Michael like a pig, too.”

“My brother,” Sam says lowly, his skin bristling with fear and rage. “Is not the one killing people. Michael is using him, and it’s important that we capture him and get Dean back. Alive. I don’t appreciate the implication he has any fault in this.”

“I don’t know,” Bobby shrugs, the muscles in his neck jumping. “I seem to remember him saying yes to that psychopath in the first place.”

Sam moves, lightning-fast, to lunge at Bobby, but Mary’s there. She puts both hands on his chest, holding him back with the look on her face. She turns her head and glares at Bobby, who holds up his hands in faux supplication, quirking an eyebrow. Sam remembers how it is to talk without speaking. A million silent conversations.

Mary turns back to him. The entire room is bristling along with Sam’s anger, and Sam realizes there are unshed tears brimming behind his eyes. Mary shifts, and his mother’s thumbs dig into his biceps, small fingers wrapping around his arms.

“You know he’s right, Sam,” Mary says firmly. “We have to find Michael. We can’t allow him to do anything more to our people, or to Dean.”

Sam stares at her for a long moment, and then nods. He tears himself out of her grasp, smoothing out his shirt and running a hand over his beard. All of the hunters are staring at him, gazes open and afraid, like he has all the answers. He knows he agreed to lead, but he wonders where he was when he signed up for _this_.

“Let me make one thing clear.” Sam’s voice is so much deeper and confident than he feels. He thinks, maybe, he sounds like his father. Determined and torn by loss, always confused. “Our top priority is always our peoples’ safety, and the safety of the public. Beyond that, I want you to leave the boundary and the cure to me. I want everyone on alert for Michael’s location. If you even see a glimpse of him, you report it to me, and you do not engage. Keep on your patrols, _in groups of two_. If anyone has a problem with it, you can talk to me. Good?”

Everyone nods tentatively, some people looking away and crossing their arms. Ben mutters under his breath, turning away, but Sam doesn’t have time for him anymore. Sam directs his glare to Bobby, who meets his eyes grimly before giving him his own affirming nod. Sam frowns, and huffs out a breath.

“Fine.” He points at three hunters in front of him, jerking his head toward the door. “You guys, come with me.”

He goes to grab an axe. He’s got a pyre to build.

.

Reno, of all places. Reno, Mary finally tells him, surfacing from a tracking search from Rowena. They’d used a torn piece of fabric that Josh had brought back from an altercation in Urbana, gripped tight in a bloody fist. The only difference was that Josh had come back alive, this time.

Sam remembers a hunt in Reno, back when he was 13 and rode around in the back seat of the Impala, head buried in a book and giving himself headaches from slouched posture and furrowed brows. He didn’t want to look out the window – didn’t want to see anything redeemable that came from life on the road, from abandoning every place they ever set foot. Sam had placed a seed of himself in every town in America, it felt like, and never got to see them grow. He tries to remember what their dad had been hunting. Dean had been allowed to come, but Sam wasn’t. Maybe a tulpa, or a skinwalker. Sam realizes, rubbing the back of his head, it could have been anything.

He asks Rowena if she’s confident about the solution. It’s only been a few weeks since they found it, less since they decided to consider it as an option. She says yes, but her eyes are tired and wary. Sam wonders why she’s still around – if she really cares about what happens to Dean, or if she’s afraid of Michael. Maybe, he thinks solemnly, she’s scared of him.

They travel in three teams to Reno on a Tuesday morning. Sam, Cas, and Jack are in the Impala, while Bobby, Mary, and Rowena ride in Bobby’s truck. Maggie and two other hunters follow them in a third car, just for backup. Sam can’t remember the last time they put together a nine person team to get a job done. Probably because they’ve never had nine people to string together, not since the days of the Roadhouse, and even then it was sparse. Sam grinds his teeth together as he grips the steering wheel, giving himself another headache. He hopes to return with ten today. He doesn’t say anything aloud, knowing that it might break their shitty luck into smaller, shittier pieces.

It’s been six months, and the Impala’s engine rumbles from misuse. Jack leans forward from the back seat and turns the radio on, flooding the cab with whatever Dean had in the console before he was taken. Both Sam and Cas tense with the noise. Before he can reach out to do it himself, Cas launches forward and switches it, changing the music to the first FM station he can find. Soft acoustic notes come through the speaker, a bastardization unto itself, and Jack frowns, slumping back against the seat and crossing his arms. Sam knows that Jack feels benched, and has been continuously frustrated with being limited, lest he wear his soul away with his powers, but Cas has been using every ounce of himself not mourning over Dean to keep the kid in line. Sam feels bad for him, but has nothing to say or do. Jack slumps over, not looking out the window at the desert surrounding them. Not looking at anything at all. Sam can relate.

They all park outside of an abandoned warehouse, tucked back behind the stationary transport semis. The building used to be a textile factory for some obscure company Sam’s never heard of – the sign still hang on each nondescript wall, with several letters missing or made into homes by the nearby birds. All at once, it reminds Sam of where they had found Dean when he was held by Zachariah, and Michael had possessed Adam. He no longer hears his half-brother’s screams in his quietest moments, but for a minute he expects to. Nothing comes.

The building must remind Cas of the same thing, because the angel frowns and opens the door abruptly, launching out of the car in a volatile shove. Sam shares a glance with Jack through the rear-view mirror, and then they follow suit. Rowena emerges from the back seat of Bobby’s truck and walks briskly over to them, her supplies bundled in a purple velvet bag. Everyone gathers around, silent and anxious. They’ve already gone over the plan, assuming the intel of their tracking spell is correct. They don’t need to go over it again.

Rowena takes the archangel blade out of the bag and hands it, hilt-first, to Sam. He nods and slips it into his jacket pocket, watching Rowena account for the herbs and appropriate animal parts inside the bag. He raises his gaze and makes eye contact with Mary, who’s frowning at him. God though he loves her, Sam has never been able to read his mother. She obviously disagrees with something, but Sam doesn’t have the patience nor the time to try to figure it out. He regards the group with a gesture and a nod, and motions toward the building. They all start to move, Castiel leading the way with a sort of vengeance in his eyes.

“Be smart, everyone,” Sam risks saying aloud. “Be careful.”

“Sam.” Mary grabs the sleeve of his jacket, and he pauses long enough to look at her. “Are you sure about this?”

“A little late to be asking, mom,” He says, and keeps walking.

“It’s just,” Her face twists up something ugly and conflicted. “What are you gonna do if it doesn’t work. If we can’t – if this doesn’t work, and you kill Dean too?”

Sam frowns, but doesn’t look at her. “I’ll mourn.”

The warehouse is silent, a fractured, empty space that doesn’t fool one of them. The point of this infiltration is not to surprise Michael with their presence. They figured out pretty quickly that that particular plan wouldn’t fly. The plan this time is to rely on manipulating the archangel’s ego. Looking around as everyone fans out in twos to reach their respective areas, Sam hopes he isn’t relying too much on his own.

He walks out alone into the middle of the warehouse floor, relishing in the deliberate echoes of his soles. He waits, lingering in the silence, until he hears the scuff of a shoe somewhere to his left, behind a pillar; beyond that, the hitched sound of a restrained growl.

The wind pounds the outside of the building, rattling through broken windows. Sam smiles.

“You know, I thought I’d get more of a welcome,” He speaks loudly into the space, spinning on his heels to turn around. “I’m starting to feel a little stood up.”

Nothing answers him, and the muscles of his left cheek twitch slightly. The light is dimming outside, casting the floor in a greyscale haze that forces his eyes to adjust.

“Not the first time I’ve waited all night for a date,” Sam says, shrugging. He’s channeling Dean, provoking in a way his brother has all but mastered, while Sam is usually silent or brooding. It makes him feel nostalgic and pained, now, to imagine what Dean might say. Has said. “I know you’re an egotistical, ignorant daddy’s boy, but I thought maybe you’d pay a little mind to the person making your life a living hell.”

“You’d be wise not to talk of my father,” A voice emanates from directly behind him, and gooseflesh erupts on the skin of Sam’s forearms involuntarily. He turns again and looks his brother’s body right in the eye. Michael stands with more posture than Dean, making himself larger and broader in a way that Dean only would in the face of danger. He always seemed to make himself just a little bit smaller around Sam, even when he’d passed him in height. Not soft, but softer than what was outside the door. Sam stares at the rim-rod straight stance, the compensation for the slight curve of his brother’s legs, and hates it. It reflects nothing of his brother and his easy, always-ready position, just as the long peacoat and ridiculous hat mock his identity. Michael smiles, an easy, disarming grin he’s pulled from Dean’s arsenal. “I had a feeling you’d come try to track me down again. It’s been a whole month since your last attempt – where have you been? A man gets lonely.”

“You are no man,” Castiel says, emerging from behind one of the columns. His hands are fisted at his sides as he approaches them, taking a wide berth from where Sam and Michael stand. His jaw is clenched so tightly that Sam can see a vein poking out in his temple. He wills silently for him to keep it together.

Michael rolls his eyes. “Ah yes, you too. The _sane_ Castiel – although really, with all these tragic visits, I wouldn’t be surprised if Naomi reprogrammed you one too many times as well. Have you come to try to peer into Dean’s soul again? I’ll spare you the effort. It’s not there.”

“Souls don’t just disappear,” Sam argues. Castiel circles around Michael, and the archangel pivots so that they’re both in his line of sight. Sam stays still. “There’s no way to extract a soul while you’re possessing the body, it’s a two bed hotel room. We know, we’ve checked, and you’re not immune to the constraints of the rules of possession.”

“Don’t you understand?” Michael asks. “There are no rules when it comes to me. I am more powerful than anything you two have ever even _spat_ at, and I am the one that will turn this world against God’s image. There is no world in which you _win_ , Sam Winchester. There are only thousands upon thousands of drafts of the same story, written over and over again until one is the most entertaining. I’ve come to peace with my role. It’s time you came to peace with yours.”

“And Dean’s, I imagine?” Cas inquires, face stormy.

Michael flicks his gaze to the angel, winks in a way that makes him flinch. “Now you’re getting it.”

“And what exactly do you think your role is?” Sam shifts on his feet, ears straining for sounds that don’t come.

“To stop the stories,” Michael says simply. “To travel from one draft to another to finally fill my potential. There was no Dean Winchester in my world, but here? Here I can do what I have always been destined to.”

“Stop the stories,” Sam repeats. “You mean, stop God.”

Michael shrugs, smirking. “Death of the author.”

“You’re deranged if you think that will work,” Sam scoffs, his laugh causing a twitch in Michael’s eyebrow. “I’m not the biggest fan of Chuck myself, but come on. Have you met the guy?”

“He’s not, as you might say, ‘fun at parties’.” Cas raises one hand to form quotation marks, coming around back behind Sam. Michael eyes him angrily.

Sam stares at Michael for a moment, turning to Cas to gesture toward his brother’s body. Michael’s jaw clenches. “Cas. He hasn’t even met Chuck. And he thinks he’s serious?”

He’s treading in deep Dean territory here with the mockery, and it’s working. Michael’s words come out in bitten off bursts. “You mind your tongue.”

“Do you seriously think your grand, glorious patricide plan is going to work?” Sam turns back to Michael, whose face and body has gone still with Sam’s words. “You think you can get up to God – and kill him – when you can’t even get through us? You were supposed to have the entire continental US taken over by your monsters by now, and you can’t even spread past the mid-west with our barriers. The entire _world_ knows about monsters now. What do you think we’re going to be able to do, with a little government funding? We’ll have a cure for your affliction in days, and then what? He’s not in heaven. You’ll be right back where you started –”

“Shut up,” Michael snarls, façade breaking in an instant. He steps forward toward Sam, shoulder hunched slightly in an enraged, menacing tell. Sam takes a half step back instinctively, but forces himself to stay rooted. “I worked too hard for my silence to have it filled with _you_. Dean is strong-willed and stubborn, but you are delusional, and a fool. You are destined for Lucifer’s hold. But my brother could not stop me before, and you will not stop me now.”

Sam stares back, their bodies less than a few feet apart. “Lucifer is dead.”

Michael tilts his head in a way that reminds Sam of Dean so much it blinds him. His heartbeat rockets through his chest as Michael considers him. “Yes, he is. And you should be, too.”  
  


Cas launches forward at the same moment Michael reaches to grab Sam’s shirt with his fist. Cas drops a lit Zippo from his clenched hand, lighting the circle of dribbled holy oil obscured in the darkness of the room. Only spare moonlight filters through the windows, illuminating their faces, before the oil catches fire and the whole room breaks into chaos. Silent sentinels of Michael’s monsters are revealed in the shadows, and are instantly engaged with the hidden hunters gathered in the corners of the warehouse. Michael’s hand wraps around the fabric of Sam’s jacket and he tosses him across the space, flying over the line of the holy oil and crashing onto the floor just before one of the concrete columns. Castiel, trapped within the circle with Michael, throws a punch at the archangel’s face. Michael ducks and knees Castiel in the stomach before bringing his elbow down on his back, sending him collapsing to the floor.

Rowena trots out from her hiding place, crouching beside Sam. She offers him a hand but he waves it away, rolling over onto his side.

“We need to do the spell now,” Sam urges, and Rowena dumps the supplies on the floor. Sam stands over her, gun drawn. Someone shrieks from the east corner, and there’s the muted sound of a vampire being decapitated. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Bobby and Mary fighting three werewolves together. A dozen yards away, Maggie and Jack are facing a wraith. Sam swallows and turns back to the fire.

“Cas!” He yells, fear creeping up into the base of his throat. Rowena’s hands flitter over the bowl on the floor, her breath pulsing out in Latin chants. Cas and Michael are circling one another, both holding angel blades in their hands. The issue is that Cas’ blade can do nothing against Michael, but Michael’s can do everything to Castiel. Cas ducks a blow and kicks out at Michael’s knees. Dean’s body stumbles toward the barrier made by the fire, Michael’s eyes narrowing at it like a nuisance. Sam has no doubt that if he wasn’t distracted, Michael could put out the fire with an iota of effort. Before he can do so, Cas is back on him, pushing him toward the fire. Michael grabs Castiel’s lapel and twirls him as he stumbles, pushing him into the barrier and holding him there. Flames erupt on the back of Cas’ coat, moving up toward his hair, and he screams aloud, his hands fighting Michael’s grip. Sam whips back toward Rowena. “We need it, now!”

“It’s ready!” Rowena says, and that’s all Sam needs. She continues to chant and he runs back toward the circle, leaping over the fire with ease. He grabs the back of Michael’s coat and pulls him off of Cas. Michael lets him do it, laughing as he steps back. It’s a horrible sound, listening to him laugh with Dean’s voice. Sam grimaces at his smile, at the blaze of ferocity in his eyes. Cas staggers to his feet, the back and sides of his coat singed with the holy fire.

“You are so naïve,” Michael laughs. “You think you can defeat me with a little fire? You think you can take me down any level at all without harming your brother?”

“I think you underestimate everything you see,” Sam snarls. “Because you think it’s all just a game, and that you’re above it all.”

“You are _such_ a little brother,” Michael mocks, and Sam’s jaw clenches. “You want to know why I’m winning? Why I finally got my peace and quiet in this body? Dean’s _dead_ , Sammy.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam spits. Cas’ hands are shaking.

“Don’t you think he would have come out by now?” Michael taunts them. “The first time – the first time I had to stuff him back in every twenty minutes. But now, six months without even a _peep_?”

“I said shut up!” Sam yells.

Michael’s body begins to flicker, like a broken projection on a white curtain. Sam resists the urge to rub his eyes, like he’s seeing double. Dean’s body splits into two before snapping back again, and Sam can see Cas through the split in the two specters, staring at the sight. Michael moans, a guttural growl, before he splits into two visages, both curling over from pain. Sam can’t hear anything over the crackle of the fire and the rush in his ears. He can’t waste any time. Both of the bodies straighten up, staring at him, but only one steps forward, a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

“Sammy?” Dean asks, raising a hand, and Sam steps forward. One hand meets the front of Dean’s shoulder, and the other comes up, plunging the archangel blade into his chest. Michael lets out a laugh, a broken, bloody thing as he folds over the blade, and then the light comes. It pours from the wound, arching up and through his veins until his eyes burst with the bright blue glow. Sam closes his eyes, wracked back with force, and brings the blade out of the body as he goes. There’s another blast of light, and then darkness, the fire the only source of illumination. A cloud has cast over the moon, making the dry, hot sky seem more lonesome.

Sam opens his eyes. Rowena is still crouched by the outside of the circle, the flames making her hair shine as she looks at him with shock. Cas is staring at Dean’s – Michael’s – body, the large imprints of soot-like wings staining the ground far beyond the constraints of the circle. Sam’s hands are shaking, and he sheaths the archangel blade in his pocket, not bothering to wipe off the blood. His ears are still ringing, and he can’t take in any of the sound of the fight still going on around him, of Jack running toward them, his mouth forming his name. He looks and sees the other copy still standing, eyes open but empty, wavering like a bold wind has coursed through the warehouse. Sam takes a step toward him, hoping beyond hope that Michael had been lying, that this is his brother.

Dean falls like his strings have been cut, toppling over motionless into the fire, and the sound snaps back all at once.

.

They’re passing through Cheyenne before Sam even dares to speak. The morning sun blazes over them, and his legs are cramped. He’s driven all night, barreling them back toward the bunker even though everyone else stopped near Salt Lake City to catch a couple hours and lick their wounds. Jack is sleeping in the passenger seat, head tucked uncomfortably against the seat belt and the window. Cas is in the back, where he’s been for hours, hands pressed against Dean’s head.

Sam thinks Dean looks like he could be sleeping, if it weren’t for the constant, wrenched up look of pain on his face.

He coughs first, before he tries. Cas’ eyebrow twitches in acknowledgement. “Do you think you can?”

Cas opens his eyes and looks at Dean’s arm, which they cleaned and wrapped with bandages after the holy oil fire had burned through his jacket and skin. Dean’s hands are trembling, a spastic motion that makes it look like he’s cold, but the June air is hot, and the cab of the car is stifling. Sam wishes it was that simple.

When Cas speaks, his voice is laden with misplaced shame. “Not yet.”

.

Sam watches as Jack climbs the stairs up to the front door of the bunker, pulling it open heavily and beaming at their new arrival, her hand still raised to knock on the metal frame. Jack beams her a smile; Charlie musters up a grimace.

“Hi!” Jack exclaims, pulling the door open wider so that she can enter. Charlie mutters out a greeting in return, pulling her duffle over her shoulder and struggling with the strap pulling on her long red hair. Sam glances up with a wave, but focuses quickly on Cas again, as the angel paces back and forth in the small entryway from the War Room into the library.

“So you can’t heal him,” Sam summarizes, crossing his arms across his chest. Cas frowns.

“I can’t heal him like this, no,” He murmurs, jaw clenching and unclenching in frustration. “Dean is weak and undernourished, yes, but the most drastic of these effects were consistently healed by Michael. The rest will come – it’s everything else I can’t heal. It’s been afflicted upon by another angel, it’s psychological. He won’t let me.”

“And his arm?” Sam asks.

“Much the same,” Castiel admits. “I can’t get through to him enough to help him. There is…significant damage, he’s not even dreaming.”

“So Michael burnt him out.” Cas flinches minutely with his words. It feels like the space under Sam’s eyes is going to drag him into the floor. “And we don’t know how to fix it.”

“Most vessels don’t even live past the point of possession,” Cas says. “Nick, obviously, is an exception, but I don’t believe many people have even tried. I was told it was impossible, with the vessel of Raphael.”

Charlie clunks her heels on the bottom of the stairwell, letting her bag drop to the floor. She gestures around them. “Great party you have going on, here.”

“I wish we had a party,” Jack says, coming down behind her. “Mostly we’re just strategizing, and walking around in circles.”

Castiel gives Jack a look. Sam turns and brings his gaze further into the library, where they’ve sat Dean down in a wheelchair Sam stole from the nearby hospital at 3am. His brother’s hands are pooled loosely in his lap, and his head is tilted slightly backward where Sam positioned him over twenty minutes ago. Occasionally, his eyes drift downward in a languid blink, but that’s all. Sam grinds his teeth as the light sound of The Rolling Stones enters his ears. They’d all learned after the first night that it wasn’t wise to leave Dean in a room without some sort of sound or music. Sam could go the rest of his life without hearing that panicked noise come out of Dean’s throat again, like rocks scraping up against each other in muted sorrow. Like he was taking a microplane to his vocal chords. Sam suppresses a shiver.

He turns back to Charlie, who’s staring at him with one eyebrow raised.

He runs a hand over his face, lingering in his beard. “Thanks for coming.”

“Sure,” she says, giving him a weary smile. He’s sure his looks the same.

“Just a few things,” Sam forges on. “We can’t, uh, really leave him alone anywhere right now, even when he’s sleeping. We’re trying to get him to stretch, and to, uh, eat some food, but that’s slow going. We have the music and the lights on everywhere – he doesn’t like it when it’s too quiet, or dark.”

“Right,” Charlie says.

Sam barks out a ragged laugh. “Really, I just need someone to keep an eye on him while I’m sleeping. I haven’t been getting much of that. The sleeping.”

Charlie nods, stealing glances at Dean through the doorway. She jerks her head at Cas and Jack. “Where will Dark and Handsome and Boy Wonder be?”

“We have been called to assist with the moving of the hunters to the South Dakota base,” Cas informs her. “Everyone has been relocated, and it’s taking a bit of transition.”

“Sioux Falls,” Jack chimes in.

“Cool.” Charlie shrugs. “Better to hang out here than be up there, I suppose. That’ll be a lot of clashing heads.”

“Bobby and Mary are in charge,” Sam mutters. “Jody’s going to help. But that’s why Cas and Jack are going. I don’t want any calls.”

“We will _not_ call you,” Jack says. “We’ve got it under control.”

“Yeah,” Sam gives him a lopsided grin. “Yeah, I know you do, bud. You guys taking the truck?”

“Yes, I think it will be wise to leave the Impala here,” Cas says, and then steps forward. “We should be going. We’ll be back in four days.”

Sam nods, and shares a long look with Cas, a _I’ll be back whenever you need me_. He’s comforted by it, but exasperated all the same. Jack trots along to gather his things, and Cas heads toward the garage by route of the library, stopping for a moment to crouch beside Dean. Sam knows he’s talking, speaking lowly into Dean’s ear, but he doesn’t even try to hear the words. He turns his head away, but Charlie keeps staring until their semi-private moment is over. Cas lingers his fingers on Dean’s shoulder, skinny and rounded, before he disappears through the hallway without looking back.

Sam stares at his hands, turning them over a few times and regarding the creases. After a moment, Charlie coughs, re-centering his attention.

She’s got her bag slung over her shoulder again. It looks sad and nearly empty, like a trip from Topeka to Lebanon and a weeklong stay only requires a change of clothes and a toothbrush. It’s not how Charlie used to be. “You got a bed for me, slugger?”

Sam sighs, and then hoists himself to his feet. “Yeah. Two doors down from mine. Let me just bring Dean back to his room, I’ll set him up there.”

Charlie stares at him for so long that he’s worried he’s said something wrong, or not said anything at all. But then she turns, and walks away from him, down the hall toward the bedrooms. Sam looks back at Dean, like he’ll have some insight to the way Charlie’s acting, but predictably, he doesn’t say a thing.

No matter how much Sam wants to sleep, _needs_ to sleep, he just can’t seem to do it. Cas tells him that Dean rarely falls asleep, only does so for pockets at a time, and almost always jerks awake before he can fall into a nightmare. Sam’s heard them, the nightmares – they’re nothing like what he used to hear Dean have, short outbursts of breath and sweating through the sheets, turning over to turn on the motel light in one fluid gasp. Where Dean used to be all motion, now he’s simply stillness. He wakes from his nightmares with no physical change in position. He doesn’t shout, or squirm, he just chokes on his breath and drags his vocal chords over granite, hands trembling in his lap. He makes those noises when he’s awake too, whenever Sam moves too quickly or accidentally turns the lights off, like he’s afraid. Sometimes he finds he can’t handle it, but he has to, now. Sam has seen Dean terrified, and then he’s seen this. It makes rage bubble over in his bloodstream until he can’t focus anymore. He can’t sleep knowing that his brother is a second away from anguish at any moment.

Charlie avoids them for most of the day, walking in like clockwork whenever Sam needs to shower, or eat, or sleep. She insists she doesn’t mind sleeping during the day so that Sam can keep a semblance of his fucked up sleep schedule, but he can see the tiredness in her eyes. He tries to make her comforting meals as repayment, but he’s never been a talented cook – that was always Dean’s forte. The best he can do is make them a salad and a simple stir fry, which she tells him are good but it’s been three days of the same meals. Dean barely gets down any water, to the point it’s starting to concern him and he’s researching methods of reintroducing foods to malnourished patients instead of sleeping. He threw up the broth Sam fed him yesterday, didn’t even move to do it, just let it come down the front of his shirt. Sam had walked to the bathroom after cleaning it up and vomited, too.

He can’t wait for Cas and Jack to get home. Charlie’s been a help, and hasn’t complained, but somehow it still feels like he’s doing this all on his own. He knows he’s ungrateful, but sometimes just looking at Dean is enough to make him want to cry. Somehow, throughout all of this, throughout everything, this wasn’t an option he had considered. He always thought he’d get all of Dean or no Dean. He knows that if Dean were aware enough to understand his position, he’d hate it. To Dean, Sam thinks, this must be worse than death.

Sam rises from his bed and pads down the hallway, rubbing his temples with his forefingers. God, he’s way in over his head. They knew nothing about the effects of being a vessel, about dealing with it, because they never really had to _deal_ with it. Sam had died, and his insanity stint had been more from the effects of the Cage than anything else. When Gadreel had possessed him, he’d actively _healed_ him from the Trials. Every issue they’ve ever had in this regard had always been fixed by some insane deus ex machina. He didn’t know what he had expected – for Dean to be like Nick? For Dean to be alright simply because he was Dean?

Sam swallows down a sense of self-loathing and walks toward the kitchen, intent on brewing some coffee and getting his day started at…four am. Wonderful.

He pauses as he passes Dean’s room, hearing shuffling and sounds of distress. Charlie is whispering out curses, and Dean’s throat is issuing a sad sound – a low whine instead of a rough keen, but it’s enough to have Sam quietly push at the door to peek inside. Charlie is shoving at Dean’s heavy leg, trying to get him up off of the bed. When that doesn’t work, she steels herself with a sigh and rises, coming around the other side of the mattress and grasping Dean under his armpits. She nudges the wheelchair closer with her foot, and Sam can see the small dark stain spread across the sheets. She hoists Dean up with a grunt and deposits his body in the chair, the roughness a result of Dean’s heaviness and her lack of strength. She swears under her breath, and Dean lands in a way that rattles him, the noise coming from his throat halting as his tongue hits the back of his throat.

Suddenly, Sam taps into his rage, opening the door and bursting into the room. “What the hell are you doing?”

Charlie looks up at him, her hair falling out of a messy bun and over her eyes. She gestures to the sheets. “Cleaning up. He had an accident.”

Sam shoves away the shame that crawls its way up his neck, the misplaced shame he feels on behalf of Dean, and frowns. “You. You can’t do that.”

Charlie’s eyebrow twitches. “What?”

“Not talk to him, move him around like he’s a sack of flour!” Sam’s neck is itchy with heat and incredulousness. In the pre-dawn earliness, he looks at this girl like he hardly knows her. He’s realizing now that he doesn’t. “You still have to talk to him like he’s a person, he’s still. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” Charlie bites back. She’s so much angrier, this version of her. So much more bitter. “That he had an accident, and I had to clean it up by myself, because you were supposed to be sleeping.”

“You could have come and gotten me.”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Charlie springs up to her full height, leaving the sheets on the bed. Dean curls in one arm like he’s going to hug his chest. “But I’m not trained in this sort of thing. I don’t exactly have a plethora of experience. I’m trying to be nice, because you’ve been kind to me and helped me set myself up in this universe, but I don’t have the sort of magic loyalty or attachment that you’re looking for out of me. This fucking sucks, and I get it, and I’m trying to help, but maybe you could cut me some slack.”

“Some slack,” Sam echoes, laughing to himself. He doesn’t know what to say. “Why the hell are you even here?”

Charlie’s face shuts down even more. He can sense he’s being cruel, but he can’t stop. “Because you could have asked any loser for help, but you asked me. So I came.”

“You could have said no,” Sam says. “Were you even going to stay for a minute, for a second after Cas and Jack got back?”

Charlie stares at him. “No.”

Sam laughs again, turning in a half circle and bringing his hands up into his hair. “This is obviously my fault. I thought – I don’t know what I thought. The real Charlie would –”

“The real Charlie would _what_?” Charlie barks out. Her eyes are piercing as daggers, her voice laden with resentment. Behind her, Dean shifts, eyes wandering around the room and voice grating out sound again.

They both stare at Dean, and then at each other. Sam steels his jaw. “I think you should go.”

“Sure thing,” Charlie mutters. She shoulders past him without another word, stomping down to where she’s been keeping her things. Sam repositions Dean in the chair, making it so he looks more comfortable, and turns the white noise machine up another notch. Then he strips the bed of its sheets and walks down toward the laundry room, movements stiff and jerky. When he drops the sheets into the machine and shuts the lid, he hears the front door heavily open and slam closed. A silence echoes behind it, despite the constant music filtering through the halls, and Sam continues numbly into the kitchen.

He stands there for a moment, unsure of why he came in the first place. There are plates and loose pieces of food stacked up by the sink, since neither him nor Charlie would clean them. He should have cleaned them. He should clean them now.

Sam roars, overcome with anger, and sends the plates crashing to the ground. They shatter into large pieces, skidding across the concrete floor. He rises and grabs a pan off of the hanging hook, slamming it down on the counter and then chucking it across the room. It crashes against the cinderblock wall, falling onto the table and scattering the salt and pepper shakers onto the floor.

He steps forward a few feet to grab the bulletin board and rip it off the wall. Papers fly everywhere, mixing in with the glass on the floor – paper clips of potential hunts from when they got back from the Apocalypse world and were training the new hunters, recipes for large meals Dean had found and printed out, a picture of him, Dean, Cas and Jack in the kitchen that Maggie had taken. Sam stares at it all, breath heaving, fighting back tears at the corners of his eyes.

He stands there for some time, and then starts cleaning it all up, slowly and methodically. He gathers all the papers in his hands, organizing them and putting them on the table. He takes a dustpan and sweeps up the shattered glass and ceramics of the plates, dumping them into the trash. He nicks his hand picking up a larger piece, and doesn’t flinch at all. But then he hears crying from down the hall.

Panic in his chest, Sam runs back down toward the bedrooms, skidding and ducking into Dean’s room. Dean is on the floor, haven fallen out of the chair in some effort to walk, or move. He’s curled up on the unforgiving concrete, bitterly weeping without tears. His breath hitches and catches before bursting out of him, and he curls more into himself. Sam drops onto his knees, crawling forward to be beside his brother, chest collapsing in shame. He rolls Dean toward him, supporting his shoulders and pulling him upright into his chest. He wraps his arms around him, holding him in an embrace as Dean’s breath wavers and shakes.

“I’m sorry,” Sam sobs out, surprised at the break in his own voice. He can feel tears sliding down his cheeks, but doesn’t make any move to wipe them away. He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for – nothing, everything. Dean’s breath shakes some more, his forehead pressed into Sam’s shoulder. “I’m so goddamn sorry. I’m sorry.”

He can feel Dean’s mouth move clumsily as his chin nudges his chest, but has to strain his ears to hear him around the heaving of his breath. Dean’s right arm is curled up behind Sam, the side of his thumb pressing into his back.

“Suh,” Dean says, the utterance more of a drawn out wail of a breath than anything else. Sam swallows, his heartbeat hammering in his chest, and Dean does it again. “Suh-Sammy.”

“It’s me,” Sam rasps, trying to believe it’s not just himself hearing things where he needs to hear them. He gathers Dean closer, dropping his forehead on top of Dean’s crown. He keeps him there, his armpit pressed uncomfortably against the corner of the desk, until Dean’s breath evens out and his shaking goes still. Until it’s just the two of them, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the world. “It’s me. I’m here.”

.

Three days later, Sam walks by Dean’s door again, this time at two in the morning in search of a glass of water. The door is wide open now, the light from the hallway flowing onto brick walls. They always leave at least the lamp on in Dean’s room, now. Jack had asked him how he could tell Dean didn’t like the dark. Sam doesn’t need to speak to him to know when his brother is uncomfortable.

_What did he do?_ Sam labors, wishing Dean could just answer his questions. Despite everything Dean had ever been through, he’d never broken – and after the night Charlie had left, Sam was certain he hadn’t broken now. He’d said so to Cas, told him that he thought Dean’s issues were simply physiological, a result of Michael carelessly riding his body around for so long. Cas had shaken his head sadly. If that was it, he said, he would be able to heal him.

Sam wasn’t so sure. Dean had said his name – he kept coming back to that, the broken, wavered sound of it. _Sammy_.

He pauses by the doorframe to check in on Dean, lulled in by the near imperceptible sound of humming. Dean is propped up on the headboard, supported by pillows, his head tilted back and eyes closed in sleep. Cas sits next to him, throat moving slightly as he hums along to the music. The notes of a solemn Led Zeppelin tune drift over the room, casting it in a timeless light. Cas’ hand rests on Dean’s shoulder, his thumb sweeping small circles around the thin fabric of his shirt.

Sam regards Cas. Cas, who is anguishing over his inability to heal Dean. Who, after Dean had been taken, would only speak to Jack or Sam if he had pressed him, running headfirst into suicide missions and following any lead that even breathed their way. Cas, who seemingly lived because of and for Sam’s brother. Sam has gotten close to Cas over the years, sure, regards him as family, but looking at how he soothes Dean into the only peaceful sleep he’s had in who knows how long, Sam concedes. It’s hard to hold a candle to the space Cas has made for Dean. What Cas will do for Dean, even before Sam asks.

He turns and walks toward the kitchen, legs moving mechanically without much thought or input. He’s thankful Cas is here, is ridiculously, outrageously grateful Dean has him with him – but despite it all, Sam finds himself feeling bitter and lonely.

.

Jack corners him in the library one day, hands rhythmically clenching into fists at his sides. His face is crunched up in confusion and frustration. Ever since Dean got back, and really long before, Jack’s been ricocheting between emotions, coming to terms with levels of anger and doubt he never had time to address before. Sam sighs, turning toward him, ready for the deluge. He expects a million questions, questions about Michael, about Charlie, why she’s gone, why they’re playing music, why nothing is happening.

He doesn’t get any of that. Instead Jack breathes, looking down at the floor. “When’s Dean going to get better? If he’s sick, and he’s resting, he should be getting better.”

Sam frowns, looking Jack up and down, taking in the shaking of his shoulders, the raw emotion in his eyes. Down the hall, if he strains to hear, he can make out Cas comforting Dean has he breathes out of his stridor.

He looks at Jack and tells him that Dean might not ever get better. Then the anger comes, and Jack looks at him, hurt and betrayed, before stalking off toward the kitchen. His footsteps are loud, and broken, and Sam waits for them to stop before he continues restacking the books.

.

Dean does start to get better – somehow, despite all of their doubts, even Castiel’s, he starts to improve. Hope flutters through Sam’s heart daily with each moment of eye contact, of facial expression, recognition. Dean is a stubborn son of a bitch, and he is fighting. That has to be the only thing that’s dragging him through. Sam has known that his brother runs on loyalty and spite alone, but this is the moment he finds himself most grateful for it.

Yet, still, there are the limitations. Dean starts talking again, but only does so for moments at a time, before either losing steam or retreating into himself. His limbs shrink back like they’re used to being crunched up, and resist extension. Sam takes it upon himself to make sure Dean stretches at least three times a day, but often it’s painful for him, and something heavy starts to pool at the base of Sam’s sternum whenever he hears Dean breathe through pain. Dean starts eating again, excited by familiar tastes and smells, but he can’t stomach enough of it, folding a hand over his gut as cramps riddle through him. His hands shake when he’s not focused, horrible spastic tremors that make it look like he’s freezing. At first, Sam brings a blanket around with them throughout the bunker, but it becomes evident that the only thing it brings Dean is some vague sense of comfort, nothing more. He’s not cold, but his body is locked in a shock that it won’t spring itself out of.

And then there are the nightmares.

Sam reaches his limit in sudden, unexpected moments, often abandoning Dean with Castiel or walking to the angel’s door so he can reprieve him. It’s not like he hasn’t seen Dean afraid, hasn’t seen Dean cry. There are just moments that the anger rushes through him like a tidal wave, so much he thinks his own hands will start shaking. He looks at Dean and sees him recovering, but sees him with his agency stripped away. Whenever Dean is fully with them, he’s frustrated, aware of his constraints and pissed about them. When he’s pulled back, his eyes are haunted, afraid but in a dull way that seems to denote that he’s not surprised, anymore.

Some nights he sits outside of Dean’s door, back against the brick off the hallway, and listens to Cas as he soothes him in and out of dreams. Dean won’t tell them what had happened, or what it had been like, but in the moments when he wakes up from his nightmares, not yet fully aware, Sam gains some small insight. If Cas knows he sits there, violating Dean’s privacy, he doesn’t say anything.

“Worse,” Dean croaks out one night. Sam can imagine him tucked over himself, one hand up toward his chest, leaning toward Cas. He doesn’t turn to look to see if he’s right. “’was worse.”

“What was worse, Dean?” Cas asks softly. There’s the sound of a hand rustling against fabric. Other than the faint sound of a car’s wheels passing over gravel coming from the white noise machine, the bunker is silent. Sam feels like it could echo with him.

Dean swallows, a compulsive sound that lasts a few seconds. “Hell,” he whispers, breathing heavily like he’s just told a secret. Cas hums under his breath, but doesn’t say anything more. Dean’s breathing begins to even out, and Sam stands, making his way to the bathroom. Detached memories of the torture Lucifer subjected upon him rattle through his brain, and he bends over the toilet to vomit. Shame washes through his veins and he stands, rinsing his mouth out and going back to his room. He slips his shoes on. It’s only four, but he leaves through the garage to go for a run.

Dean doesn’t say much to him about Michael. When they finally tell him the story of how they got him back, his face collapses inward like he’s disappointed. He never asks them, but Sam can see the myriad of questions Dean has – can see how he doesn’t quite believe them. Sam can understand. He plays over that night, among many others, every time he lays down to sleep, but it never quite sinks in as being totally real.

When he calls, Mary says that Dean just needs more time. That it’s only been a few weeks, and the progress he’s made is incredible. Sam doesn’t understand how she can be so patient with this, can just accept that the person Dean was before may not ever fully return. It’s just one of the many things Sam adds to the list of things he doesn’t know about his mother. He tries to get her to call Dean more, because it makes him happy. She says she’ll call every other day. She manages once every other week.

Jody calls them more, is the one that gives Sam the most updates about the hunter’s move to South Dakota and how things are progressing at Bobby’s old salvage yard. It was Sam’s idea in the first place to move people there, but it still sits poorly in his chest, knowing that people have moved into Bobby’s place – the old Bobby. There are too many hunters for the one house, although most people are almost always on the move, so they set to work building another house on the property, using the old one as more of a headquarters for hunt information. Sam sends hours on the phone every morning, directing people this way and that, telling them how to move against Michael’s scourge. He’s grateful that Jack helps him, and that Cas doesn’t mind spending time with Dean. Whenever he has a free moment, he tries to reconcile feeling so grateful with feeling so exasperated. It never works.

“How are you doing, Sam?” Jody asks him over the phone. Sam snorts quietly, because it’s a stupid question. He could never do that around any of the other hunters, but Jody is a friend.

He drags a hand down his face. “I’m fine. How are the girls?”

“Fine,” Jody mimics him, and he can practically hear her rolling her eyes. “Seriously. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

“What do you think, Jody?” Sam asks.

“I can tell by your sass not much at all,” She teases him. “Are Cas and Jack not helping with Dean? I can come down for a while, maybe send Claire –”

“No, Jody, it’s fine, thank you,” Sam cuts her off. “I, uh, don’t really think Dean could handle any more people around right now, even though he says he’s peachy now. And I don’t see Claire as being the nursemaid type.”

“You’re probably right about that,” Jody muses.

“No, they’re very helpful, I just,” Sam tries to find the words. “I just. It’s hard to rest. Dean’s not resting, either, even though that’s all he’s supposed to be doing.”

“Boy find his legs again and start running?” Jody asks. “Figures. Stubborn ass.”

Sam laughs, a sharp exhale. “Yeah. Yeah, that about sums it up.”

Jody goes quiet for a moment, deep in thought. “Hey Sam.”

“What’s up?”

“Speaking of Dean, I just need you two boys to be real careful, okay?”

“What do you mean?” Sam frowns, peeling himself off the wall where he had been leaning. “More careful than usual? Is it the monsters?”

“It’s the everything, the cluster we’ve got going on right now. Look, I overheard some of the hunters last time I was over with Mary and them. Some people aren’t happy, they don’t think the Michael situation has been totally handled.”

“Totally handled,” Sam echoes. “We killed him.”

“Right, but the monsters are still raging, the government’s still involved.” Jody sighs. “It looks like some of these people thought it would all be fixed once he was dead, that his spell would break, or something.”

“Monsters are monsters, even when they don’t have someone to lead them,” Sam remarks.

“It just seems like some of these guys are getting restless, and they’re blaming Dean.”

“Why?” Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. “These guys are smarter than this.”

“Well, if you look into reports from the claimed cities, Dean’s body is in some of the pictures,” Jody says. “Even with Michael gone, it doesn’t take long to assign some blame. And there are more hunters in the world – not all of them are your friends.”

“Sure,” Sam’s eyebrows furrow down far enough to start giving him a headache. “Great. Thanks, Jody, for the tip. I’ll start looking into some protection, until this blows over.”

“I hate to say it, but maybe it would help if you took a trip up here,” Jody suggests. “I think maybe you being gone is only worsening the rumors. People might think it’s not as cut and dry as we’re spinning it.”

“It never is,” Sam says. “I’ll try to find the time, but only once Dean’s a bit better. I don’t want to leave him right now.”

“You do what you need to for Dean, Sam,” Jody says. “He’s your priority right now.”

“Along with the rest of the world.”

“Wouldn’t have given it to you if you couldn’t handle it,” He can hear Jody smile. “I’ve gotta cook up some grub for these girls – they’re eating like elephants. I’ll call you later in the week.”

“Bye, Jody.”

He hangs up the phone, dropping his hand down to his lap. He stares at the wall. Down the hall, he can hear Jack talk excitedly about watching a movie. Cas responds, but he can’t make out the words, and Jack asks Dean to pick. Sam grits his teeth. He brings the phone up to his face again, and dials Rowena.

.

Dean catches a headwind of autonomy and immediately launches himself into overdoing it, which Sam admits he probably should have seen coming. At first Sam’s not especially worried – the only place he even goes outside of the bunker is to the grocery store, and Dean’s never even been especially keen on interacting with the general public. He just berates him into buying supplies to make more burgers, which he secretly doesn’t even mind. But Dean must feel more cooped up than he lets on, because one day he decides he’s going on a hunt and come hell or high water no one is going to stop him. Sam has a million calls to make, has to research a hunt for Maggie, has to go the grocery store, so he gears up to plead Castiel into going with him. He doesn’t even need to ask. Castiel just holds out his hand as Sam gives him the new concealment charms Rowena cooked up for them, and walks out to the garage.

Sam should have seen this coming, Dean’s need to get out of the bunker and get back to normalcy. But there is no normalcy. It seems like each day Dean presents with another sign or symptom of dealing with this aftermath, swapping out a retreatment tactic with some other moody coping mechanism. His brother only really hangs around in four places – his room, the kitchen, the range, or the garage, and every time Sam joins him it’s like he’s shattering some sort of illusion in Dean’s mind. He keeps eyeing them all suspiciously, his eyebrows furrowed in thought, before his face relaxes, almost like he’s forgotten what he was angry about. Sam should have seen some kind of burst coming, and maybe he had. But he didn’t make time for it.

The explosion when they get back home from the hunt isn’t as bad as he feared, but it’s still disturbing. He tries to make allowances in his head for Dean not believing them, but something about it still stings, still whispers _he doesn’t trust you_. He and Castiel meet eyes across the War Room, but where Sam imagined there might be hurt and anger he only sees fear. Cas is _afraid_ that Dean thinks this all isn’t over. Something about the hunt must have perturbed him. Sam makes a mental note to talk with him about it later. He chastises himself for even thinking that this could all have been behind them so soon – that Dean keeping to himself, asking for help less, was all just a sign of things going back to normal.

It’s all coming out now. But god, though Dean’s eyes are open and vulnerable as he tells them what he really experienced under Michael’s possession, Sam knows it’s not all there is. There’s always more.

Sam goes into strategy mode. First, de-escalation. They manage to calm Dean down enough that his shoulder blades come down his back, his right hand developing a slight tremor again. Dean says he wants to take a walk, and Sam readily agrees to go with him – on their way out he meets Cas’ eyes again with a silent conversation of their own, an _I’ve got this_ and a _thank you_ and a _we’ll be back soon, we’ll talk after_. They climb up the stairs and out the front door of the bunker, taking a small side trail down toward the field about a quarter mile away.

Comfort comes before information. Dean is still rigid, a live wire of anxiety and misunderstanding, but he plays along well enough, obviously trying to reach a place of trust and safety. Sam tries to balance being hurt at Dean’s reaction with his horror of what Michael really did to his brother. What he made of his brother, and abruptly, terribly, Sam realizes he sees Dean differently than before. With all that he’s promised, with all that he’s tried, he sees Dean trip over a small rock on the path and sees Michael’s face. He thinks, _this is still not my brother_.

But then Dean doesn’t get up again. He’s hunched over, palms on his knees, staring at the grass swaying slightly in the wind and breathing heavily. Like he’s not quite sure how to do it anymore.

“Dean, are you okay?” Sam asks, the feeling of ice water tracing its way down his throat. He steps forward, a hand outreached but not touching. Dean still lashes out when he’s not ready to be touched, and Sam’s always tried to respect that, just has always tried to _help_. Dean coughs, a hand coming up to his chest, and Sam frowns, the concealment charm on his own torso chiming with his movement forward. Dean’s breathing is faster, now, like he’s in the middle of one of his nightmares. “Dean?”

Dean doesn’t answer him. He can feel his heartbeat pulsing in his head, and distantly he imagines it’s Dean’s. Sam abandons all of his own protocol, all of his normal plans, and steps forward to grab a hold of his brother. He’s about to sit him down, make him drink some water, maybe have another heart to heart – but before he can get there, something sharp and heavy comes down on the back of his head, and Sam loses all sense of strategy at all.

.

His temple collides with something cold and unrelenting, and somehow that’s what brings him out of unconsciousness. Sam blinks his heavy eyelids a few times, cursing under his breath and clenching up his facial muscles before letting them go again. The world around him is grey – a pale, horribly bland, slate grey that reminds him of the bunker’s kitchen, before Dean added all the touches. All the things that makes it seem like home. That make him feel –

Dean. Sam blinks again, bringing his sagging head up again. It fell, sometime. The room around him is a solitary color, a representation of greyscale, and it shakes around him in random, adjunct motions. A car. It takes him another shake of the head and a few more blinks to comprehend that no, it’s not a car, it’s a container. He’s sat on a hard, grey bench, his hands constricted behind him. He shakes them, and hears a distant jingle of metal on metal. Not just a car. A prison transfer truck.

Memories of their isolating stay in the hold of the federal government threaten to take over his thoughts, but he shakes them away. He tests the hold of the handcuffs behind them, and finds they hold tight. They’re not zip ties, he’ll get them eventually, but it’s going to take some effort. Sam raises his head and finally notices another body in the moving cab. Dean’s head is hanging over his chest, lower lip relaxed and jutted out, moving in time with the jostling vehicle. His eyes are slumped closed. Sam frowns. He looks more at ease than he has in weeks.

Sam turns his head, overcome with confusion and emotion, and looks right into the eyes of another man, staring at him. His dark hair falls over one of his eyes in an uneven wave, his chin stubbled and unkempt. Sam tries to not let his jaw fall open.

“Hey, boss,” Josh says, his elbows propped up on his knees. A handgun rests comfortably in his hands.

“What the hell?” Sam jerks against the bonds, half of his gaze continuously on Dean, who does not stir. “What the fuck is this, man?”

Josh raises an eyebrow, leaning back against the metal wall. “What does it look like, Sam?”

“It looks like you’ve kidnapped me and my brother,” Sam deadpans. “For something that is obviously ridiculously stupid.”

“Let’s just say some of us are a little _unnerved_ by the way things have been going down. This whole hunters are a family now, kumbaya sort of shit? It’s not flying anymore.”

Sam exhales sharply through his nose. Sounds like something Dean would say. “Then your issue is with me and my leadership. Whatever. You don’t need to involve Dean in this.”

“Yes, we do,” Josh’s expression turns dark and macabre, like a flicker of the light. “Because he’s the one that’s brought this all to hell.”

“Dean hasn’t done anything, he’s just been –” Sam bursts out incredulously, but then cuts himself off. He doesn’t want anyone to know the extent of Dean’s condition after they got him back from Michael – not just because it makes him more vulnerable, but also because he knows that for Dean, it’s humiliating as well.

Josh eyes him, jaw clenching as he grinds his teeth. “Right.”

The car slows, and then jerks over a bump and stops abruptly. The back of Sam’s head hits the wall behind him, and a shock of pain goes down through his neck, all the way to his fingertips. God, he has a headache. Josh bangs on the wall a few times with the meat of his fist, doing nothing for Sam’s developing migraine, and a few moments later the back of the truck opens.

There’s two more guys, Sam assesses quickly. He knows one of them – had been one of the Apocalypse world hunters that always hung along begrudgingly, never really taking to this new world or what Sam had to say. He’s not surprised to see him. The other man he’s never seen before in his life, but he has all the cuttings and sharp edges of a hunter. He’s wearing only a black tank top in the warm summer night, a jagged, puckered scar running from where his neck meets his shoulder down over his collarbone and under the fabric. There are no lights other than the singular bulb above them in the truck, and Sam takes everything he can in quickly, skimming every surface with his eyes. He’s sure they’re going to blindfold him, or put a bag over his head, but nothing happens. Josh unlocks the handcuffs from the steel wall of the car and guides him out onto the ground, the muzzle of his handgun pressed between Sam’s shoulder blades. Sam turns his head and sees the other two go for his brother, unclasping him and carelessly manhandling him out of the small space. He sees Dean’s head knock against the frame of the door, and he growls low in his throat.

“Hey!” Sam barks, jerking away from Josh. “Watch it!”

Josh lets out a low groan of frustration and kicks out at the back of Sam’s knees. He crashes to the ground, kneecaps stinging with their contact against the hard dirt, and then Josh brings the butt of the gun down on his back. Sam lets the breath rush out of his body, breathing against the dusty ground until Josh scoops him back up again. He doesn’t give him any help – he knows he’s heavy, and uses the time Josh takes to heave him up on his feet again to strain his eyes, watching the other men cart Dean toward the outline of a dark barn.

The inside of the structure is dry and hot, lined with tall stacks of round bales of hay. The owners probably won’t be happy to see their barn used for what will undoubtedly be torture, but Sam assumes their complaints aren’t high on the hunters’ list of concerns. There are two metal folding chairs sitting in the middle of the floor, and the two other hunters turn to dump Dean into one, pulling out zip ties and securing his ankles to the bottom. They do the same to his wrists, securing them to metal arm rests, and then fasten a folded bandana over Dean’s eyes. Josh pushes Sam into the other chair, the hunter he doesn’t recognize coming over to help bind him in the same way. The plastic of the zip ties digs into the soft skin of Sam’s ankles, but he ignores it. Instead of fastening his wrists to the arm rests, he tugs his handcuffs behind them and secures them to the metal rung across the back of the chair. Sam scoffs. All in all, it’s a stupid way to tie up somebody, and they probably know it.

Then they start pouring out the holy oil.

“Are you guys insane?” Sam asks, one eyebrow notched up toward his hairline. “That’s not going to do goddamn anything, there are no angels here.”

“You know,” Josh muses, gesturing for the other men to continue while he saunters over toward Dean. “We’re not so sure about that, chief.”

The slap across Dean’s face is sudden and hard, the noise ricocheting across the quiet barn. Sam can’t help the affronted, angry sound that bursts out of his throat, jerking forward on the chair. A strong arm comes behind him, rooting it to the ground. Dean’s face scrunches up with the impact, and then continuously clenches and unclenches as he tries to crawl back into awareness.

“S’mmy?” Dean slurs, turning his head. In the solitary glow of the moonlight, Sam sees for the first time a matting of blood on the side of his skull. Rage continues to bubble in his chest, knowing that these assholes aren’t pulling any of their punches when it comes to hurting his brother.

“Dean?” Sam says, clenching his teeth as Dean begins to comprehend he’s been restricted, bucking and pulling at his binds. “Dean, it’s alright, stand still. We’re gonna get out of here.”

“Sammy?” Dean asks again, pulling his shoulders forward. “Sam, what. I can’t see. I can’t see.”

“Take the blindfold off,” Sam demands.

“Yeah,” Josh shrugs. moving behind Dean. “Don’t think so.”

“Josh,” Sam growls as Dean begins to become more distressed. “C’mon, Josh, take the fucking blindfold off.”

“Sam!” Dean husks out, agitated.

“You, light it,” Josh orders, pointing at the other Apocalypse world hunter. Sam realizes it’s Ben, the man who fought back against his leadership after Jake had been killed. Then Josh turns to the other man, gesturing toward a table on one side of the barn. “You, get the stuff.”

“Who are you fighting here, Josh?” Sam asks, pulling tentatively at the handcuffs behind him, trying to see if they’re loose. “Because whatever issue you have here, it’s not with us.”

“Yes, it is,” Josh asserts. “Our issue is with Michael, and since you’ve been helping him, you’re our issue now too.”

“Helping him?” Sam asks. “I fought him. With you all. Michael is dead – who the hell even are you guys?”

“I’m hurt, Sam.” Ben murmurs, reaching down to light the holy oil. It erupts with a flare, the heat touching the back of Sam’s hands.

“My name’s Oliver,” The other man tosses out casually. “My dad’s name was Steve Wandell. You killed him in 2007. My sister was turned by one of Michael’s shifters in Des Moines.”

Something sinks in Sam’s stomach. Great, someone that had already wanted them dead for valid reasons.

Josh walks forward to Dean, taking a serrated knife and bringing it to his chest. He rakes the knife downward, slicing through the fabric of Dean’s shirts and exposing his skin. He holds both of Dean’s hands, uncurling them out of fists and laying them gingerly on the arm rests of the chair. He takes the knife and abruptly stabs downward, piercing the back of Dean’s hand and making him grunt. Josh repeats it on the other side and dips his fingers in the pooling blood. He spreads sigils across Dean’s chest, ignoring the man’s sharp breaths of discomfort. Ben finishes mixing the contents in a bowl.

“What is that?” Sam demands. “What are you doing?”

“You’re not the only one that knows how to do spells,” Josh says. He drives the knife further into the back of Dean’s hand, but beyond a spasming in his face, he barely reacts. “Over in the other shithole, had to be able to tell which newcomers were people, and which were angels. Fuckers liked to play double agent, sometimes. Found our own way to do magic, and you don’t need to be half witch to do it.”

Sam’s eyebrow twitches. He’s always been half-something. His entire life, Sam was always at best half himself. But there was always _Dean_ – whole, loud, larger than life. Sam looks at him now, slack mouth and hung head, and sees nothing. A vast emptiness where his brother should be, and the void of it fills Sam with unshakable rage.

“So, what?” Sam spits. “You find out whether or not Michael has been secretly hitching a ride this whole time, and then what? You just kill us?”

“More or less,” Josh shrugs. “We sneak a peek, see where Michael’s hiding, and then we pry him out. Sorry, Sam, but I don’t think Dean’s gonna make it to the end of the ride.”

“You son of a bitch,” Sam snarls. “There’s nothing in him. Michael is _dead_ , you’re going to kill an innocent man!”

“Define innocent for me,” Oliver taunts, coming closer to Sam.

“Alright, let’s start up this light show,” Josh signals to Ben, who lights a match and drops it into the bowl in his hands. He starts a low line of chanting, and Dean’s head comes up from where it was dipped, chin nearly brushing the sigils of blood on his chest.

“Sam?” Dean asks one more time, voice husk and bone. He sounds disoriented, more than from the head wound and the blood loss. It’s a voice Sam’s learned to recognize the last few weeks, a signal that Dean is about to retreat into himself.

“Dean, stay here with me,” Sam says, leaning forward. “I’m alright, okay? These bastards aren’t –”

“Yeah, no,” Oliver decides, lunging forward and delivering a punch right to Sam’s jawline. The force of the blow knocks the chair sideways, but Oliver catches it with his hand right before it topples over. He rights it and comes behind Sam, reaching a clunky piece of fabric into his mouth, cutting under his tongue. He ties it tightly behind Sam’s head, and in the panicked rush after the punch, Sam can feel his throat spasm with the block to his airway, forcing his tongue into the back of his mouth. He forces himself to breathe through his nose, and has no choice but to watch as Oliver fists a handful of his hair, prying his head up to look at the ritual unfolding before them. “You just sit here real pretty-like, alright?”

Sam makes a noise in the back of his throat, watching as Ben continues the ritual. Dean gives a few bucks and kicks in resistance, but then falls nearly completely still as it goes on, save for the ever-present tremor in his hands. Sam struggles against his own binds, but Oliver’s grip on him is tight and unyielding. Finally, the chanting starts to reach a climax, Josh leaning over Dean expectantly as Ben finishes the spell. He slices a cut into the palm of his hand, letting it drip into the bowl, and the contents begin to glow in time with the sigils on Dean’s chest. Dean’s head comes back with an unseen force, and Sam watches in shock and horror as the spaces behind his eyeballs begin to glow as well, stricken with the pale blue of Michael’s grace.

“There!” Josh shouts, fisting his hand. “He’s there!”

Ben frowns, taking a step back. “It’s weak. That’s not a full angel.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Josh stresses. “We have to be rid of Michael for _good_ , once and for all. Prepare the extraction spell.”

“Josh, man, are you sure it’s going to even work?” Ben asks, doubt creeping into his voice. “We’ve done it on other angels, sure, but never an archangel.”

“We’re going to _try_ ,” Josh roars back at him, moving around the front of Dean so that Sam can’t see him anymore. “I don’t care if we have to dismantle his vessel limb from limb, I will _not_ let this go on any longer.”

Sam takes stock of the situation, sensing that Oliver’s attention is now on the other two and the pale light still emanating from the sigils on Dean’s chest. He makes his decision in a fraction of a second – he doesn’t care what Josh is saying, doesn’t even care about how apparently part of Michael is still in his brother’s body. These are things he can worry about later, but for now, it’s go as they are, or die. Sam hedges his bets on Dean.

He explodes upward in sudden movement, long legs straightening as best they can attached to the chair as the top of his head collides solidly with Oliver’s chin. Oliver releases him and stumbles backwards, cursing. Sam whips around, bending forward so that the legs of the chair hit Oliver in the chest. Sam pivots, shifting his weight to bring it down on the back of Oliver’s knee, sending him down to the ground. Then he’s jumping, pushing his weight back as he falls over Oliver’s fallen body. Josh and Ben are already running toward them, abandoning Dean, but it’s too late. Sam’s full weight lands on Oliver’s back, the right back chair leg pushing nearly two hundred pounds through his skin and ribs. Sam hears the leg go through Oliver’s body more than he sees or feels it, hears as the metal end meets either the front of Oliver’s ribcage, or the concrete floor beneath it.

Josh screams in rage, launching himself toward Sam as he still sits in the chair. He catches Sam in in the midsection, sending them both toppling backwards. Oliver’s body jerks as the chair leg detaches itself, and Sam rolls over backwards. He manages a sort of backwards somersault, landing upright uncomfortably on his knees on the barn floor, Josh behind him. Instinctively, he throws his head backwards, the back of his head hitting Josh in the nose just as he comes forward toward him. His breath rushes through his nose as Sam stands, hopping toward Ben and then sliding to the ground like a baseball runner, his hip jarring as it and the edge of the chair meet the floor again. He barrels into Ben’s knees, and he falls over Sam’s body in a crumpled heap.

God, he’s going to feel this tomorrow.

One side of the chair is buckling under itself, giving Sam a little bit of leeway but not enough. He shakes the handcuffs, hoping they’ll dislodge, but no dice. Josh staggers behind him and kicks Sam’s chair, knocking him over onto his back. Blood flows freely from his nose, pouring its way over his mouth and down his chin. He reaches down, grabbing the front of Sam’s shirt, and then throws him down again. Tinnitus begins to ring in Sam’s ears, and he’s reasonably positive he has at least a minor concussion by now. Oliver’s body lies adjacent to Sam’s, just a few feet away, and Ben kneels over it, hands hovering. It’s lying halfway over the holy oil fire, the flames licking at his shirt and up toward his skin, hindered in progress by the blood. Josh leans over Sam again, mouth curled in a snarl. Both of the hunters’ backs are turned to the barn door.

“You’re a goddamn dead man, Chief,” Josh growls.

“What the fuck,” Ben echoes, gesturing to the pool of blood around Oliver’s body. “He fucking killed him with a metal chair. What the fuck?”

Sam barely has time to blink before a spray of blood splatters over his face, Dean appearing behind Josh to hit him over the head with his own folded metal chair. Josh sinks to the ground right beside Sam, and he turns his head to the other side as Dean brings the chair down again. Sam feels something wet and hot splatter against the back of his neck, and tries not to cringe. Dean rises and throws the chair at Ben, catching him square in the chest and sending him stumbling back against one of the round bales. Dean tosses a knife from one hand to the next and then throws it, the blade landing swiftly in the hollow of Ben’s throat. He staggers, gurgling, before he falls, joining the others on the ground in a macabre painting of red.

“Yeah, dude,” Dean echoes, bending forward to put one hand on his knee. The bandana that was secured over his eyes is now pushed up into his cropped hair, slicked with sweat and blood. “What the fuck?”

There’s a moment where Sam is blindingly afraid Dean won’t be able to cross the holy oil line, but he steps over it easily, bending down to shakily pull Sam up. His chest is exposed, the sigils still burning with the pale blue light. At least his eyes aren’t glowing, just darting from one stimulus to the next, their normal shade of green. He goes to untie Sam, and then huffs, walking over to Ben and pulling out the blade, boot firmly on his chest. Dean slashes through the zip ties, and then Sam’s gag, smashing the handle of the knife against the chain of the handcuffs until it releases. Sam stands, working his tongue around in his mouth, and looks down at the three dead bodies surrounding them.

“Where’d you get a knife?” He asks, laughing to himself. Dean looks at him, offended, and then raises his pant leg, revealing an empty sheath tucked into his boot.

“Not my first rodeo,” Dean spits. “Always come prepared, ain’t that what they teach you in Girl Scouts?”

“Whatever.”

Dean coughs, dragging the back of his forearm across his face, and then flinches, doing it again with the other side when he realizes there’s blood in his sleeve. “What a bunch of fuckin’ a-holes, Sammy.”

Sam steps over to Josh’s body, carefully avoiding his head and reaching into his coat pockets. He emerges with his cell phone, obviously taken from his pocket in the beginning. He repeats the process with Ben’s coat, finding a set of car keys to the transport truck. He eyes Dean, who is leaning against the ritual table, breathing heavily and tapping his fist on his thigh. The sigils are fading away now, the pale blue light replaced by the crusty brown of dried blood. Sam finds himself thankful for it.

He ignores the near dozen of missed calls on his phone and dials Cas, who picks up on the first ring. “Hey, Cas. I didn’t get your voicemails, we had a bit of a situation. No, we’re fine. We’re good, we’ll drive back, I don’t think we’re far. Dean might need some healing. We’re _fine_. See you soon.”

Sam hangs up, limping toward the barn door on stiff legs and sore knees. He jingles the car keys in his hand, raising Dean’s gaze.

“Better call shotgun,” Sam says, and Dean huffs out a laugh.

.

Dean is silent the entire ride home, barely even budging when Sam turns on the radio and finds a classic rock station to land on.

When he sneaks a look over at him, Dean’s staring down at his hands, like he’s trying to convince himself that they’re his. Sam’s still bleeding, but Dean stopped some time ago. Somehow, the holes that were stabbed through by Josh’s knife have healed over, only showing small scabs hidden under the layers of dried crimson.

Sam mentally kicks himself. They didn’t even wash off the blood.

.

Cas heals Sam when they get back, not even needing to heal Dean of anything. He agrees to get rid of the transport truck, agrees to go back to the barn, twenty miles away up on the border of Nebraska, and get rid of the bodies. He demands answers when he returns, and Sam promises to give them to him. They send Jack to bed, despite his nervous, questioning energy, and take turns in the shower washing away the muck and blood. Sam’s got tiny scratches from the hay all over his body, and they itch like hell. He wishes Cas could have taken those away, too, but he knows his powers aren’t what they used to be. Helping the head injury is enough.

Sam and Dean sit in Dean’s room, too wired to sleep even though it’s four am. Dean sits on the bed, turning over the Rubik’s cube in his hands, face simultaneously troubled and impassive. Sam sits on the desk, turning over a book in his hands that he’s definitely not going to read. Neither of them say anything, but they’re both thinking about the same thing.

Cas gets home at six in the morning, padding into the room silently and standing in the doorway. Dean looks up as he walks in, hands stalling on the puzzle, but Sam’s gaze remains locked on his hands, clenched in fists around the book. Castiel clears his throat, quietly, and steps farther into the room.

“The bodies are gone, as is the vehicle,” He clarifies, and then pauses, looking down and back up again in a sign of insecurity. “I’m very glad you both are safe. Why…how did…what happened?”

Sam lifts his head to speak, but Dean beats him to it.

“We’re so fucked, Cas,” Dean groans, his shoulders rolling back and down. “Everything’s so fucked.”

“I recognized two of the men as hunters from the Apocalypse world,” Cas frowns. “I don’t understand why they would attack you in this way.”

“Third guy was some nobody with a vendetta,” Dean shrugs. “I killed his mom, or something.”

“You didn’t kill his mom,” Sam sighs. “Michael’s monsters killed his sister. I killed his dad.”

Dean snorts.

“And the ritual?” Cas urges on. “There was quite a lot of blood, and the singeing from the holy oil. I nearly burned down the barn to get rid of all the…evidence.”

“They forced Dean into this ritual to determine whether Michael was still riding around inside of him,” Sam explains.

Castiel’s eyebrows furrow. “I was not aware that such a spell existed.”

Dean shrugs again. “Alternate reality perks.”

“Did they finish the spell?” Cas asks.

Dean’s face falls back into the solemn expression he rode on the way home. “Oh, they finished it, alright.”

“I do not understand,” Cas’ voice grates out, agitated. “Why would they attempt such a –”

“Because they found it,” Sam cuts him off, looking at the floor again. “His grace. There’s still. Some of Michael’s grace, inside of him.”

Cas’ face flickers, but he doesn’t show any other expression. “And they found it evidence enough that this is not Dean?”

“Josh did,” Sam sighs again, shoulders hunching higher toward his ears as he leans forward. He tries to ignore the fact that doubts have been echoing in his own head, had been making themselves known long before Josh and Ben had abducted them. “But I don’t know. I don’t think they cared.”

“Are you idiots not getting this?” Dean barks out suddenly, back rigid. They both eye him and the tension riding in between his joints, a coiled spring about to snap. “This. This means that I was – he’s still here, he’s still _inside_ of me.”

“I’m not convinced that’s true,” Cas says. “This all feels inconsistent. We have seen no evidence of Michael emerging in your physical form, or your psyche.”

Dean steels his jaw, muscles jumping, but stays silent.

“What I don’t understand is the healing,” Sam says. “Cas, you said you weren’t able to heal him.”

“I wasn’t,” Cas confirms. “I thought it might be from the psychological barrier formed by the damage of Michael’s possession, but it’s possible it was from another source. I was not even able to heal your minor pains. Even when you asked for it.”

Sam scrunches his face up in confusion, looking from Dean to Cas, but Cas turns his head away, nearly sheepish in the action.

“Maybe the grace was healing him slowly, imperceptibly, almost,” Sam suggests. “And then the ritual brought it forward.”

“You were improving faster than normal human approximations accounted for,” Castiel says.

“Dean,” Sam gestures to his arm, where the bandages from the holy fire burn remain. “Take those off.”

Dean heaves a heavy sigh of his own and then hikes up the sleeve of his t-shirt, having taken off and thrown away his torn layers when they got back to the bunker. He peels away the bandages, jaw becoming more and more clenched as it becomes abundantly clear that there is no injury beneath the gauze. There should have been at least some scarring, a discoloration of the tissue where the fire had eaten away at his cells. Smooth, unmarked skin looks back at them all, unnerving in its bareness.

“Great,” Dean breathes. “So, what, Michael’s been hiding away in my thick skull and is closer now that those bozos said some magic words? Sorry, but how is that a good thing?”

“It may not even be Michael, it might just be his grace,” Sam points out, but Dean doesn’t look comforted.

“No,” Dean shakes his head. “No, I can’t walk around knowing a part of that asshole is still in my veins. We gotta take it out.”

“Dean, the second half of the ritual seemed violent,” Sam argues. “They said you probably wouldn’t even live –”

“Then I don’t fucking live!” Dean yells, rocking forward, and everything goes still. He breathes raggedly, gathering his breath and his strength. “I don’t – I don’t care. I will _not_ be responsible for this asswipe bringing any more pain to the world. This shit, it’s on me, and I. We gotta take it out.”

Sam looks at him, grit in his stare and torment rolling around in his stomach. He’s about to say something, argue more, rope Cas into it, but he’s interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He pulls it out of his pocket, ready to deny the call, but then he sees it’s Rowena. He stands.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll be right back,” Sam says, and Dean and Cas nod at him. Dean shoos him away, and he steps out of the room, walking down the hall.

“Samuel?” Rowena asks, and Sam huffs out a sigh through his nose, walking toward the War Room.

“What is it?”

“My, I thought you’d be awake by now,” Rowena remarks snidely. “Didn’t think you one for sleeping in.”

“It’s six, I’m surprised _you’re_ awake,” Sam returns. “Didn’t sleep. We’ve had a…it’s been a long night. What have you got?”

“I’ve got _progress_ ,” He can hear Rowena beam through the phone. “I was playing around with some of the spell work, and I’ve finally got something. It’s not complete, obviously, don’t even know if it’ll work fully, but it’s potential.”

“What do you mean?” Sam pauses by the war room table, looking down at the clean surface. “Do you mean for –”

“The cure, yes, Samuel!” Rowena says excitedly. “I believe that I’ve got something here. We could counteract whatever angel magicks Michael used to enhance all these monsters, free them from his mission and control.”

“What about them _being_ monsters?” Sam asks. “Can we reverse that?”

Rowena pauses, making small _tut_ noises on the other end of the line. “Well, I’m not sure about that. It might depend on what kind of monsters they are – whether Michael appointed original alphas, or sires. If I could get the blood of the sires, I’m sure I could work something out less barbaric than feeding it to all the poor souls that were turned, but for other creatures it might be more complicated.”

Sam runs a hand down his face. “Right.”

“But this could be the first step in the right direction,” Rowena emphasizes. “Breaking all of them free of Michael’s lasting influence – many of these creatures might _want_ to be cured.”

“It’d be better than a war,” Sam remarks softly. “No, that, this is good, Rowena. Great. When can we try it?”

“I can be by the bunker by tomorrow morning,” Rowena says. “The best location, I believe, would be in the epicenter, in Kansas City, if we can get to it.”

“I can get us there.”

“Wonderful,” Rowena purrs. “Then we’ll get to work on getting those poor souls back into shape again, so that the military doesn’t get all uppity. They’re a wee bit impatient, those boys.”

“They’re not the only ones,” Sam says. “Thanks, Rowena.”

“I’ll see your shining face tomorrow, Samuel,” Rowena replies cheerfully. “I expect a smile when I arrive – things are looking up!”

“Yeah,” Sam huffs out a laugh, lacking any mirth whatsoever, pursing his lips to the side as Rowena hangs up the call. “Sure.”

He walks back toward Dean’s room, shoving the phone in his pocket and rubbing his thumb against his palm in old habit. The possibility of curing the turned population in the cities isn’t as uplifting as it should be. Sam ponders the existence of Michael’s remaining grace in Dean’s body. They’d thought that once Michael had died, his influence over the monsters would, too, but that wasn’t the case. Garth had said it was because Michael had used some of his grace to enhance the monsters in his spells. Was the grace inside Dean still tying them all to Michael? Did the grace leave influence over Dean, as well?

Sam stops a few feet from Dean’s door, hearing him and Cas still talking inside. He walks forward quietly, not quite wanting to disrupt their conversation. Dean is no longer yelling, both of the men’s tones reduced to soft, if not urgent, cadences. Sam pauses by the doorway. They’re both standing, talking only a few feet apart. The nature of it reminds Sam of the intimate conversations they used to have, nearly a decade ago. Sam would do this then, too, wait outside and not wish to intrude. Sam knows his input matters, knows that he still means a hell of a lot to Dean – but this is always where his mind is made up, in conversation with Cas.

“It just, it makes sense, now, in a batshit, fucked up way,” Dean says. “This whole time I thought y’all were lying to me, were hiding something, because I could always feel him still, like a shadow or something. But it turns out I was right. He’s still fucking here.”

“If we do this,” Cas says, and Sam’s heart tightens. “It could have disastrous consequences.”

“Things could be disastrous if we don’t, Cas,” Dean asserts. “I can’t just walk around with a piece of that psychopath bouncing around my skull. We don’t know what it’ll do, what it’s already doing.”

“And if you’re stripped away of your life, what will you do then?” Cas asks. “Or worse, if you are reduced to nothing, but are still alive?”

Dean coughs uncomfortably, face ashen and afraid. “I can’t take the risk, man. I just can’t.”

“You know I will always respect your autonomy, and your decisions,” Castiel says, stepping closer. “Even if I do not agree with them.”

“Cas,” Dean chokes out. “Thank you.”

Cas reaches out to him, and Sam steps into the doorway, heart up in his throat. Dean’s face turns toward him, steeled over the fear, as Cas brings his hand to the side of Dean’s head.

.

**Author's Note:**

> It wouldn't be me without an ambiguous ending. That being said, I'm claiming something totally different than last time. As of right now, I fully intend on this being a trilogy, with a third part to tie all this together with an actual ending. No idea when that will be, since I'll need to do a lot of inspiration searching and brainstorming, but it'll come.
> 
> Thank you all for coming with me this far! If you're returning after reading Gallows Pole, just know that I love you and everyone who read and commented are the reasons I wrote this sequel. If you're new, hi and welcome!
> 
> I'd love to talk with you all (and maybe even get some writing prompts!) if you want to follow me on tumblr themostexcellentfinder.tumblr.com. Much love!


End file.
